What in Aristotle corresponds, in whole or (more likely) in part, to our contemporary notion of predication? This paper sketches counterparts in Aristotle's text to our theories of expression and of truth, and on this basis inquires into his treatment of sentences assigning an individual to its kinds. In some recent accounts, the Metaphysics offers a fresh look at such sentences in terms of matter and form, in contrast to the simpler theory on offer in the Categories . I argue (...) that the Metaphysics initiates no change in this regard over the Categories . The point that form is (metaphysically) predicated of matter is a contribution, not to the account of statement predication, but to the analysis of compound material substances. Otherwise put, in our terms Aristotelian form is not - in particular, is not also - a propositional function, but a function from matter to compound material substances. (shrink)

In this paper I present a formal language in which complex predicates stand for properties and relations, and assignments of denotations to complex predicates and assignments of extensions to the properties and relations they denote are both homomorphisms. This system affords a fresh perspective on several important philosophical topics, highlighting the algebraic features of properties and clarifying the sense in which properties can be represented by their extensions. It also suggests a natural modification of current logics of properties, one in (...) which some complex predicates stand for properties while others do not. (shrink)

When, for example, we say of something that it ‘is an object’, or ‘is an event’, or ‘is a property’, we are engaging in categorial predication: we are assigning something to a certain ontological category. Ontologicalcategorization is clearly a type of classification, but it differs radically from the types of classification that are involved in thetaxonomic practices of empirical sciences, as when a physicist saysof a certain particle that it ‘is an electron’, or when a zoologist saysof a certain animal (...) that it ‘is a mammal’, or when a meteorologist says of a certain weather‐phenomenon that it ‘is a hurricane’. Classifications of the latter types presuppose that the items being classified have already been assigned to appropriate ontologicalcategories, such as the categories of object, species, or event. What do categorial predications mean? How are their truth‐conditions to be determined, and how can those truth‐conditions be known to be satisfied? Do they have truthmakers? Questions like these are amongst those addressed in the present paper. (shrink)

The notions of subject matter and aboutness have been objects of considerable attention among philosophers over the last few years. Current theories of subject matter take sentences to be the primary bearers of subject matter: “sentences have aboutness properties if anything has” (Yablo, Aboutness, Princeton University Press, 2014). However, some subsentential expressions can also be thought of as being about something. Moreover, it appears that the subject matters of sentences depend in a systematic way on the aboutness properties of their (...) subsentential components. In this paper, we focus on the question of what predicates are about. We provide an account of predicative subject matter in which subject matters are assigned to predicates in a natural way, and which can be smoothly integrated with some existing accounts of sentential subject matter. We also argue that the notion of predicative subject matter is a worthy object of study, both within the current debate on subject matter and in its own right. (shrink)

When, for example, we say of something that it ‘is an object’, or ‘is an event’, or ‘is a property’, we are engaging in categorial predication: we are assigning something to a certain ontological category. Ontological categorization is clearly a type of classification, but it differs radically from the types of classification that are involved in the taxonomic practices of empirical sciences, as when a physicist says of a certain particle that it ‘is an electron’, or when a zoologist says (...) of a certain animal that it ‘is a mammal’, or when a meteorologist says of a certain weather‐phenomenon that it ‘is a hurricane’. Classifications of the latter types presuppose that the items being classified have already been assigned to appropriate ontological categories, such as the categories of object, species, or event. What do categorial predications mean? How are their truth‐conditions to be determined, and how can those truth‐conditions be known to be satisfied? Do they have truthmakers? Questions like these are amongst those addressed in the present paper. (shrink)

Attempts to give a Logic or Semantics for vague predicates and to defuse the Sorites paradoxes have been largely a failure. We point out yet another problem with these predicates which has not been remarked on before,namely that different people do and must use these predicates in individually different ways. Thus even if there were a semantics for vague predicates, people would not be able to share it. To explain the occurrence nonetheless of these troublesome predicates in language, we propose (...) a different approach based on asking the question, “How do these vague predicates help people to communicate with each other?” We show that in general, even though different people assign different extensions to vague predicates, they usually benefit from receiving information framed in terms of them. (shrink)

It is well-known that the domain of case assignment extends beyond the arguments of a predicate to a range of adverbials in some languages, including Korean. In this paper we concentrate on case-marked Duration/Frequency adverbials which are characterized as ‘extensive measures’ by Wechsler and Lee (1996).∗ In some languages, case-marked adverbials are in the accusative and provide a boundedness to an event (cf. Kuryłowicz (1964), Kiparsky (1998), Kratzer (2004)). However, in Korean, the D/F adverbials can show accusative or nominative, (...) with no apparent difference in their temporal or aspectual semantic contribution. (shrink)

Attempts to give a Logic or Semantics for vague predicates and to defuse the Sorites paradoxes have been largely a failure. We point out yet another problem with these predicates which has not been remarked on before,namely that different people do and must use these predicates in individually different ways. Thus even if there were a semantics for vague predicates, people would not be able to share it. To explain the occurrence nonetheless of these troublesome predicates in language, we propose (...) a different approach based on asking the question, “How do these vague predicates help people to communicate with each other?” We show that in general, even though different people assign different extensions to vague predicates, they usually benefit from receiving information framed in terms of them. (shrink)

Neural correlates exist for a basic component of logical formulae, PREDICATE(x). Vision and audition research in primates and humans shows two independent neural pathways; one locates objects in body-centered space, the other attributes properties, such as colour, to objects. In vision these are the dorsal and ventral pathways. In audition, similarly separable “where” and “what” pathways exist. PREDICATE(x) is a schematic representation of the brain's integration of the two processes of delivery by the senses of the location of (...) an arbitrary referent object, mapped in parietal cortex, and analysis of the properties of the referent by perceptual subsystems. The brain computes actions using a few “deictic” variables pointing to objects. Parallels exist between such nonlinguistic variables and linguistic deictic devices. Indexicality and reference have linguistic and nonlinguistic (e.g., visual) versions, sharing the concept of attention. The individual variables of logical formulae are interpreted as corresponding to these mental variables. In computing action, the deictic variables are linked with “semantic” information about the objects, corresponding to logical predicates. Mental scene descriptions are necessary for practical tasks of primates, and preexist language phylogenetically. The type of scene descriptions used by nonhuman primates would be reused for more complex cognitive, ultimately linguistic, purposes. The provision by the brain's sensory/perceptual systems of about four variables for temporary assignment to objects, and the separate processes of perceptual categorization of the objects so identified, constitute a pre-adaptive platform on which an early system for the linguistic description of scenes developed. Key Words: argument; attention; deictic; dorsal; logic; neural; object; predicate; reference; ventral. (shrink)

When we speak of a predicate's extension, we intend to delineate the class of objects of which it is true.' Unfortunately, in some common situations the proper ground for determining whether a predicate is true of a particular individual becomes uncertain or ambiguous. One kind of situation in which this can happen — the kind of situation I will be particularly concerned with in this paper — is one in which the linguistic community is unaware of the existence (...) of kinds of objects to which a predicate might be thought to apply. It is frequently indeterminate whether such un-expected objects should be assigned to the extension or to the counter-extension of the predicate. This common phenomenon suggests deeper issues concerning the rationale for our intuitive extension assignments, I shall discuss some real life examples of this phenomenon, but it will be convenient to begin with a simple fictional case. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Perry contends that an utterance of ‘It is raining’ must be assigned a location before being truth assessed. The location is famously argued to be an unarticulated constituent of the proposition an utterance of expresses. My paper examines this view from a pluri-propositionalist perspective. The sentence contains an impersonal pronoun, ‘it’ and the impersonal verb ‘to rain. I suggest that the utterance of semantically determines ‘to rain’, which is an event, and that that event is instantiated at a (...) time indicated by the tense at a location It is assumed that all event are located in space and time. (shrink)

In this paper we introduce a notion of context for Groenendijk & Stokhof's Dynamic Predicate Logic DPL. We use these contexts to give a characterization of the relations on assignments that can be generated by composition from tests and random resettings in the case that we are working over an infinite domain. These relations are precisely the ones expressible in DPL if we allow ourselves arbitrary tests as a starting point. We discuss some possible extensions of DPL and the (...) way these extensions interact with our notion of context. (shrink)

In this paper a semantics for dynamic predicate logic is developed that uses sequence valued assignments. This semantics is compared with the usual relational semantics for dynamic predicate logic: it is shown that the most important intuitions of the usual semantics are preserved. Then it is shown that the refined semantics reflects out intuitions about information growth. Some other issues in dynamic semantics are formulated and discussed in terms of the new sequence semantics.

D2.1 (PL models and assignments) i. A PL model is a pair M = 〈DM, ·M〉 such that (a) DM is a non-empty set, and (b) ·M maps each A ∈ Con to AM ∈ DM, and each B ∈ Prdn to BM  (DM)n. ii. GM = {g| g: Var  DM} is the set of M-assignments. For any g ∈ GM, u ∈ Var, d ∈ DM, g[u/d] := (g\{u, g(u)})  {u, d} is the u-to-d alternative to (...) g. (shrink)

The standard rule of single privative modification replaces privative modifiers by Boolean negation. This rule is valid, for sure, but also simplistic. If an individual a instantiates the privatively modified property (MF) then it is true that a instantiates the property of not being an F, but the rule fails to express the fact that the properties (MF) and F have something in common. We replace Boolean negation by property negation, enabling us to operate on contrary rather than contradictory properties. (...) To this end, we apply our theory of intensional essentialism, which operates on properties (intensions) rather than their extensions. We argue that each property F is necessarily associated with an essence, which is the set of the so-called requisites of F that jointly define F. Privation deprives F of some but not all of its requisites, replacing them by their contradictories. We show that properties formed from iterated privatives, such as being an imaginary fake banknote, give rise to a trifurcation of cases between returning to the original root property or to a property contrary to it or being semantically undecidable for want of further information. In order to determine which of the three forks the bearers of particular instances of multiply modified properties land upon we must examine the requisites, both of unmodified and modified properties. Requisites underpin our presuppositional theory of positive predication. Whereas privation is about being deprived of certain properties, the assignment of requisites to properties makes positive predication possible, which is the predication of properties the bearers must have because they have a certain property formed by means of privation. (shrink)

The classical analysis of donkey sentences like (1.a,b) in Kamp (1981) and Heim (1982) assigns them truth conditions as given in (2.a). That is, they are treated as quantifications over farmer-donkey pairs. Partee (1984) and Kadmon (1987) have pointed out that the proper reading of (1.b), and a preferred reading of (1.a), is rather a quantification over farmers, as illustrated in (2.b).

The paper discusses the structure of non-verbal predication, with particular reference to the role of the copula. Differently from the main tenets of contemporary logico-philosophical and linguistic theories, a model of predication is proposed where the verbal component (specifically, tense information) is regarded as central in establishing the syntactic and semantic relation between a predicate and its subject. It is thus possible to recover some of the insights of the pre-Fregean analysis of predication. The proposed solution has a number (...) of significant consequences for the structure to be assigned to non-verbal predication, in particular for the semantics of small clause constituents, where the predication is established without the copula. (shrink)

Uncertainty and vagueness/imprecision are not the same: one can be certain about events described using vague predicates and about imprecisely specified events, just as one can be uncertain about precisely specified events. Exactly because of this, a question arises about how one ought to assign probabilities to imprecisely specified events in the case when no possible available evidence will eradicate the imprecision (because, say, of the limits of accuracy of a measuring device). Modelling imprecision by rough sets over an approximation (...) space presents an especially tractable case to help get one’s bearings. Two solutions present themselves: the first takes as upper and lower probabilities of the event X the (exact) probabilities assigned X ’s upper and lower rough-set approximations; the second, motivated both by formal considerations and by a simple betting argument, is to treat X ’s rough-set approximation as a conditional event and assign to it a point-valued (conditional) probability. (shrink)

Husserl's views add up to a very complex set of conceptual relationships, Which I try to articulate in twelve theses. What I here call assertion--The author himself uses various terms--Is the sort of propositional attitude hume discussed as belief and brentano as judgment, I show how he distinguishes it from such things as namings and predications, Even from predications which assign existence, Truth, Or reality. I also deal with the neutral counterpart of assertion and its relation to the characteristically phenomenological (...) attitude. (shrink)

Truth conditional semantics is the project of ‘determining a way of assigning truth conditions to sentences based on A) the extension of their constituents and B) their syntactic mode of combination’. This research program has been subject to objections that take the form of underdetermination arguments, an influential instance of which is presented by Travis: … consider the words ‘The leaf is green,’ speaking of a given leaf, and its condition at a given time, used so as to mean what (...) they do mean in English. How many distinct things might be said in words with all that true of them? Many.… Suppose a Japanese maple leaf, turned brown, was painted green for a decoration. In sorting leaves by colour, one might truly call this one green. In describing leaves to help identify their species, it might, for all the paint, be false to call it that. (shrink)

What precisely are fragments of classical first-order logic showing “modal” behaviour? Perhaps the most influential answer is that of Gabbay 1981, which identifies them with so-called “finite-variable fragments”, using only some fixed finite number of variables (free or bound). This view-point has been endorsed by many authors (cf. van Benthem 1991). We will investigate these fragments, and find that, illuminating and interesting though they are, they lack the required nice behaviour in our sense. (Several new negative results support this claim.) (...) As a counterproposal, then, we define a large fragment of predicate logic characterized by its use of only bounded quantification. This so-called guarded fragment enjoys the above nice properties, including decidability, through an effectively bounded finite model property. (These are new results, obtained by generalizing notions and techniques from modal logic.) Moreover, its own internal finite variable hierarchy turns out to work well. Finally, we shall make another move. The above analogy works both ways. Modal operators are like quantifiers, but quantifiers are also like modal operators. This observation inspires a generalized semantics for first-order predicate logic with accessibility constraints on available assignments (cf. N´emeti 1986, 1992) which moves the earlier quantifier restrictions into the semantics. This provides a fresh look at the landscape of possible predicate logics, including candidates sharing various desirable features with basic modal logic – in particular, its decidability. (shrink)

I offer a reconstruction of contemporary medical procedures of sex assignment for infants with intersex conditions. In the perspective adopted, sex assignment to intersexed newborns can be understood as a procedure that imposes determinate sex predicates. The account describes two stages of sex assignment. At the first stage of the process, the sex predicates ‘female’, ‘male’, or ‘intersexed’ are taken to denote genital morphology. Initial genital assessment of newborns imposes clear boundaries upon the extensions of these predicates through diagnostic schemes (...) of precisification. At the second stage, the sex predicates ‘female’ and ‘male’ denote sex of rearing, a therapeutic and pedagogical project aimed at producing stable and psycho-socially well-adjusted gender identity. The multi-dimensional indeterminacy of prognosticating sex of rearing at the second stage is mitigated through the prioritization of some subsets of the medical data. (shrink)

In §93 of The Principles of Mathematics, Bertrand Russell observes that “the variable is a very complicated logical entity, by no means easy to analyze correctly”. This assessment is borne out by the fact that even now we have no fully satisfactory understanding of the role of variables in a compositional semantics for first-order logic. In standard Tarskian semantics, variables are treated as meaning-bearing entities; moreover, they serve as the basic building blocks of all meanings, which are constructed out of (...) variable assignments. But this has disquieting consequences, including Fine’s antinomy of the variable and an undue dependence of meanings on language. Here I develop an alternative, Fregean version of predicate logic that uses the traditional quantifier–variable apparatus for the expression of generality, possesses a fully compositional, non-representational semantics, and is not subject to the antinomy of the variable. The advantages of Fregean over Tarskian predicate logic are due to the former’s treating variables not as meaningful lexical items, but as mere marks of punctuation, similar to parentheses. I submit that this is indeed how the variables of predicate logic should be construed. (shrink)

I. Descriptions in Predicative Position The predicative analysis and Russell’s theory part company when it comes to the argument structure assigned to sentences like (1). (1) Washington is the greatest French soldier. On a standard Russellian analysis, (1) has the following (a) logical form and (b) truth conditions.

Fodor (1990) argues that the theory of evolution by natural selection will not help to save naturalistic accounts of representation from the disjunction problem. This is because, he claims, the context 'was selected for representing things as F' is transparent to the substitution of predicates coextensive with F. But, I respond, from an evolutionary perspective representational contexts cannot be transparent: only under particular descriptions will a representational state appear as a "solution" to a selection "problem" and so be adaptive. Only (...) when we construe representational states as opaque in this manner are the generalizations of branches of evolutionary theory, like foraging theory, possible. (shrink)

Event‐related brain potentials were recorded while subjects listened to sentences containing a controlled infinitival complement. Subject and object control items were used, both with 2 potential antecedents in the upper clause. Half of the sentences had a gender agreement violation between the null subject of the infinitival complement and an adjective predicated of it. The rapid detection of this anomaly would indicate that the parser had established the coreference relation between the null subject and an antecedent, and that the processor (...) had rapidly consulted verb control information to select the proper antecedent of the null subject. The results showed that for both subject and object control items ungrammatical adjectives elicited a P600 effect. These data imply that the processor has coindexed the null subject with an antecedent, and that the antecedent has been selected on the basis of control information. These results are compatible with parsing models that emphasize the rapid influence of verb‐specific information on sentence processing. (shrink)

In so-called Kripke-type models, each sentence is assigned either to true or to false at each possible world. In this setting, every possible world has the two-valued Boolean algebra as the set of truth values. Instead, we take a collection of algebras each of which is attached to a world as the set of truth values at the world, and obtain an extended semantics based on the traditional Kripke-type semantics, which we call here the algebraic Kripke semantics. We introduce (...) algebraic Kripke sheaf semantics for super-intuitionistic and modal predicate logics, and discuss some basic properties. We can state the Gödel-McKinsey-Tarski translation theorem within this semantics. Further, we show new results on super-intuitionistic predicate logics. We prove that there exists a continuum of super-intuitionistic predicate logics each of which has both of the disjunction and existence properties and moreover the same propositional fragment as the intuitionistic logic. (shrink)

This short paper focuses on Kripke's paper on truth from 1975. It is 1. a historiographical commentary, 2. an argument about the advantages of the theory, and 3. an interpretation of its philosophical meaning. 1. Kripke presents a diagnosis of semantic paradoxes based on their similarity with ungrounded sentences. Based on Kleene's three-value logic, he then shows that it is possible to find fixed points in which the assertion of an unsubstantiated (non-paradoxical) sentence can sustain a cumulative distance with its (...) anti-extension. 2. We argue that Kripke's paper has the advantage of explaining risk in truth assessments. It provides a framework to solve problems of languages that have their truth predicate. Although compatible with Tarski's, this solution more faithfully paints the speculative and revisionist representation of assignments of truth. It exhibits the conditions of stable risk assertions (whose fixed point accumulates semantic value in a single direction) and distinguishes it from irrational assertions, which, as dogmas, base their risk on arbitrary points and provide an unstable basis for truth assertions. (shrink)

In this paper I explore how the tenseless copula is to be interpreted in sentences of the form “a is F at t”, where “a” denotes a persisting, changeable object, “F” stands for a prima facie intrinsic property and “t” for a B-time. I argue that the interpretation of the copula depends on the logical role assigned to the time clause. Having rejected the idea that the time clause is to be treated as a sentence operator, I argue: that (...) if “at t” is thought of as being associated with “a” or “F”, then the tenseless copula is most plausibly read as an “is” simpliciter; and that if “at t” is treated as being associated with the copula, then the tenseless copula is most plausibly understood as expressing a disjunction of tensed copulas. I end the paper by explaining the importance of the issue. I indicate the ramifications interpretation of the tenseless copula has for the so-called problem of temporary intrinsics. (shrink)

Antirealism about the past is apparently in conflict with our acceptance of a set of systematic linkages between the truth-values of differently tensed sentences made at different times. Arguments based on acceptance of these so-called truth-value links seem to show that fully accounting for our use of the past and future tenses will involve use of a notion of truth which is not epistemically constrained and is thus antirealistically unacceptable. I elaborate these difficulties through an examination of work by Dummett (...) and Wright. I agree with Wright's rejection of Dummett's proposal but go on to argue that Wright's account fares no better. Building on what I take to be the failure of Wright's account, I offer a solution for the antirealist which diagnoses the problem as stemming from an equivocation in the meanings assigned to the tensed truth predicates. I close by raising a different problem for antirealist accounts of the past, one which is, however, related to more general difficulties for antirealist theories of meaning. (shrink)

Fodor argues that the theory of evolution by natural selection will not help to save naturalistic accounts of representation from the disjunction problem. This is because, he claims, the context 'was selected for representing things as F' is transparent to the substitution of predicates coextensive with F. But, I respond, from an evolutionary perspective representational contexts cannot be transparent: only under particular descriptions will a representational state appear as a "solution" to a selection "problem" and so be adaptive. Only when (...) we construe representational states as opaque in this manner are the generalizations of branches of evolutionary theory, like foraging theory, possible. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: In this essay I characterize arguments by analogy, which have an impor- tant role both in philosophical and everyday reasoning. Arguments by analogy are dif- ferent from ordinary inductive or deductive arguments and have their own distinct features. I try to characterize the structure and function of these arguments. It is further discussed that some arguments, which are not explicit arguments by analogy, nevertheless should be interpreted as such and not as inductive or deductive arguments. The result is that (...) a presumed outcome of a philosophical dispute will have to be reconsidered. (shrink)

Consider predicates like 'is a fictional character' and 'is a mythical object'. Since their ascription entails a corresponding Negative Existential claim, call these 'NE-characterizing predicates'. Objectualists such as Parsons, Sylvan, van Inwagen, and Zalta think that NE-characterizing properties are genuine properties of genuinely non-existent objects. But how, then, to make room for statements like 'Vulcan is a failed posit' and 'that little green man is a trick of the light'? The predicates involved seem equally NE-characterizing yet on the surface fail (...) to mark a genuine property o f things. Instead, the truth of such predications strongly supervenes on types of referential failure. Kendall Walton's anti-objectualist account of talk about fiction provides a neat solution to this supervenience problem by invoking special games of make-believe. The present paper claims that while Walton's view thereby gains an important advantage over objectualism, the solution faces problems of its own. The rest of the paper desribes another solution, one that assigns a large role to the idea of metaphor. (shrink)

In the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle imposes some requirements on the formulation of scientific propositions: their terms must be able to perform the role of subject as well as of predicate; their terms should be universal; every demonstration must involve “primary” subjects denoted by terms that “cannot be said of another underlying subject”. Several interpreters, inspired by theses from the Categories, believed that this third requirement refers to names and descriptions of particular substances as basic subjects of predicative statements, since (...) they cannot perform the logical role of predicate. However, such reading puts the third requirement in conflict with the other two. I shall argue that this interpretation is wrong and that the third requirement does not assign to singular terms the function of basic subjects of scientific discourse, but rather acknowledges that substantial predicates have a certain prerogative to occur in denoting phrases. Consequently, Aristotle’s three demands turn out to be compatible with one another. (shrink)

In Pieces of mind, Figdor examines how to interpret psychological predicates that scientists assign to entities that commonsensically do not have a mind such as neurons and plants. She claims that these predicates are used literally to refer to the same structures in humans and non‐human entities. I argue on the contrary that most uses of this kind are merely the extension of preexisting, possibly behaviorist senses of the relevant psychological predicates.

The main doctrines of the traditional logic of terms (logica termini) are standardly organized according to the formation structure of syllogistic inferences. A syllogistic inference is analyzed into propositions, and propositions, in the last instance, to terms; the logic of terms, in line with this formation structure, is partitioned into the doctrines, respectively, of terms (terminorum), of propositions (propositionum) or judgments (judiciorum), and of immediate and mediate inferences or followings (consequentiarum immediatarum/mediatarum). This structure communicates the idea that a given doctrine (...) could be treated, to a certain extent, independently of the next one to come, so that propositions, for instance, could be examined, at least to a certain extent, independently of syllogistic inferences. Some classical philosophers such as Immanuel Kant have developed approaches that break in part this order of analysis which finds its clearest expression in the Port-Royal logic (Arnauld & Nicole’s Logic or the Art of Thinking). In Kant’s case the order is changed in favor of the doctrine of judgements. This paper examines the French philosopher Jules Lachelier’s (1832-1918) approach which similarly breaks the same doctrinal order, and which, more specifically, refines the typification of propositions according to the roles to be played by propositions in syllogisms. What lies at the core of this approach is the identification of the semantic values of categorical propositions (or, as Lachelier calls them, of propositions of inherence) in terms of modal statuses which are to determine these roles. Lachelier seems to use the set of values he assigns to the categorical forms as a tool for testing logical implication among types of predication, that is, as some sort of semantic theory in the modern sense. Lachelier also discusses the three-figured categorical syllogistic along with a method, effectively used by G. W. Leibniz, of transforming syllogistic moods into each other, and tries to confirm his semantic theory in terms of such syllogistic. This paper explains Lachelier’s analysis of meaning by treating it as a non-formal semantics of predication, and tries to make some modern sense of Lachelier’s general approach to syllogistic. (shrink)

Destructive assignment is the main weakness of Dynamic Predicate Logic (DPL, [GS91], but see also [Bar87]) as a basis for a compositional semantics of natural language: in DPL, the semantic effect of a quantifier action ∃x is that the previous value of x gets lost forever.

The main question of our article is: What is the logical form of statements containing expressions such as “… is true” and “it is true that …”? We claim that these expressions are generally not used in order to assign a certain property to sentences. We indicate that a predicative interpretation of these expressions was rejected by Frege and adherents to the prosentential conception of truth. We treat these expressions as operators. The main advantage of our operational reading is the (...) fact that it adequately represents how the words, “true” and “truth,” function in everyday speech. Our approach confirms the intuition that so-called T-equivalences are not contingent truths, and explains why they seem to be—in some sense—necessary sentences. Moreover, our operational readingof truth expressions dissolves problems arising from the belief that there is some specific property—truth. The fact that we reject that truth is a certain property does not mean that we deny that the concept of truth plays a very important role in our language, and hence in our life. We indicate that the concept of truth is inseparable from the concept of sentence and vice versa—it is impossible to explicate one of these concepts without appeal to the other. (shrink)